


Stretch

by meansgirl



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Body Image, Feels, M/M, stretch marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-28
Packaged: 2018-09-12 19:54:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9087940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meansgirl/pseuds/meansgirl
Summary: So I saw a ton of posts talking about Jack having stretch marks, so I wrote a thing.





	

Bitty sits up, one hand tracing against Jack’s inner thigh, the other leaned back a little, a loose grip around Jack’s other shin.

 

“What're you doing?” Jack asks, a little slurred from the orgasm Bitty just pulled out of him. He had expected a kiss, and the taste of himself in Bitty’s mouth, and maybe then he could roll them over and return the favor. He had already been planning it out, the way he would hold Bitty’s hips down against the mattress.

 

But Bitty has not crawled up to drape himself over Jack like Jack had assumed he would. Jack tries to bring his knees together, but Bitty is knelt between them, and he keeps that hand on Jack’s shin and holds him there.

 

“I'm just looking,” Bitty says. 

 

Jack shakes his head and squirms a little. “Don't.”

 

“Why?”

 

“It's… I'm.” Jack does his best not to squirm. “It's weird.”

 

Bitty laughs sweetly, strokes a hand down Jack’s thigh again. “I just had your dick in my mouth and my fingers literally inside of your body and this is weird? I'll stop if it makes you uncomfortable. I just… I realized I've never been able to just sit and  _ look _ . That seems weird to me.”

 

Jack sighs. Bitty looks at him like he's something special, talks to him so gently, all the time, always so good to him and Jack still can't quite believe it's a real thing that happens to him on a regular basis. Jack thinks about his therapist telling him he needs to be vigilant about how he visualizes himself. Thinks about  _ worthiness  _ and  _ deservedness.  _

 

He bites the inside of his cheek, tells himself he can talk about this because it's Bitty, and says, “I was funny looking. And I got tall, fast. And I was… uh.”

 

Bitty cocks his head to the side. “Are you self conscious?”

 

“Hello, my name is Jack,” Jack says, trying not to sound too snappish and probably fucking it up. “Have we met?”

 

But Bitty, because he's too good for Jack, just rolls his eyes and huffs at him and says, “I am aware that you are your biggest critic, but really, I think three years of appearing in The Swallow’s Most Beautiful issue would put this one into perspective.”

 

Jack blushes hard, “Please don't bring that up, it’s so embarrassing.”

 

“Oh honey,” Bitty laughs, taking pity on him and leaning forward, kissing him on the mouth and then on the cheek. “Sorry. I'm not trying to embarrass you.”

 

“No, I'm sorry,” Jack says against Bitty’s lips. “I'm being weird. It's just the stretch marks, and uh… I guess I know what I look like but it's not something I really get in my head. I don't know.”

 

Bitty sits up again at that. “What?” He shuffles back on his knees, settling between Jack’s legs again. “These?”

 

Jack shudders at the ticklish stroke of Bitty’s fingers on the insides of his thighs. 

 

“I have them on my arms, too,” he says, face hot.

 

“Where?”

 

Jack points with his right hand to his left bicep. 

 

“Jack,” Bitty murmurs, keeping one hand on Jack’s leg and stretching the other toward his arm. “They're barely there.”

 

“Like I said, it's weird.”

 

Bitty scoots back so he can kneel between Jack’s knees. “It's not weird,” he says. 

 

He bends down, swift, and presses his lips to the silvery lines on Jack’s thigh. A couple are still a little pink, faded down from the livid red they were when Jack was 14 and noticed them for the first in the shower. It was like they appeared overnight, and he remembers like it just happened. There had been a blurb in People the week before, the first one in years. A photo snapped on a shitty cell phone of Jack and his mother in public. It speculated on Jack’s “slimmed down” appearance, whether his supermodel mother had put him on a diet or his star athlete father had gotten him into a stricter fitness regimen. His mother had been livid. Jack had tried to ignore the burn in his gut as she laid into someone over the phone. 

 

It was just the hockey he was playing and, according to his father, the genetics kicking in. Jack was still hungry all the time; still couldn't move his limbs in anything resembling grace off the ice; still couldn't make his mouth say words the way his brain wanted him to. He just got taller, put on muscle, and woke up with skin on fire and these ugly streaks. 

 

Back then, Jack had thought, well, there's one more thing. He had never wanted anyone to look at him too closely, anyway, so here was something else to remember to hide. 

 

He went into the Q the next season, met Kent Parson, got even taller, had his picture taken a lot, changed in a hundred locker rooms, lost his virginity in an embarrassing fashion, drank a lot, took a lot of pills, and can't really remember if he was very self conscious then or if he managed to burn it away with hockey and sex and chemicals.

 

He does remember the year before Samwell, sitting in his parents’ house going slowly out of shape and wondering what good his body was if his brain wouldn't let him use it. He hated it, so he punished it with excessive workouts, ran until he couldn't see straight, skated for hour after hour. 

 

Jack tells Bitty all of this, surprising himself. But it feels strangely easy to say it all while he lays there naked, Bitty's chin resting on his hip, his fingers splayed across the ghosts of Jack’s growth spurts. 

 

Bitty sighs. “I'm sorry, sweetheart. You didn't catch many breaks when it came to those awkward stages, huh?”

 

“Famous parents,” Jack shrugs. “It's just always been like that. And you know. It's not like I had a clue how to talk about anything or cut myself a break, ever.”

 

“You do a fine job now,” Bitty says with a smile and a kiss pressed to the inside of Jack’s knee. “I'm proud of you, for that.”

 

“I know,” Jack says. “Thanks.”

 

“And I love your body,” Bitty says, blushing a little, but he pushes on. “It's not the only thing, or the most important. But you're gorgeous. You know I think that. You know literally everyone thinks that. But I also think these?” He tracks his fingers over the marks again. “These are just from growing. Like how you're better at talking now. They're not anything to be ashamed of.”

 

Jack just stares at him.

 

“Um,” Bitty ducks his head. “Anyway.”

 

“I love you,” Jack says, nudging Bitty with his knee to get him to come back up the bed for another kiss. “Thanks.”

 

“I love you too,” Bitty says into Jack’s cheek, kissing down his neck and across his chest to the lines that break his skin over his upper arm.

 

“You don't have to,” Jack protests, but holds still.

 

“Okay but I want to.” 

 

Bitty rests his cheek against Jack's arm, turns his body so he can tangle them up more, moves his weight off Jack and to the side. 

 

Jack watches him quietly, watches him close his eyes and sigh hot breath across Jack’s skin. 

 

“I had braces,” Bitty says after a moment. “Rubber bands and everything.”

 

Jack hums. “You do have perfect teeth; I wondered.”

 

“Oh yeah, five years of orthodontics.” Bitty cracks open one eye. “There was headgear at night.”

 

“Oh.” Jack smiles, can't help it. “That's…”

 

“Yep. I weighed like eighty pounds soaking wet, I was a foot shorter than everyone, and I had metal mouth. And bad skin.”

 

Jack can't picture it. He’s pretty sure Bitty is the most attractive human being he's ever met. His brain can't wrap itself around anything else. 

 

“I bet you were cute,” he says.

 

“Not remotely, but that's sweet of you.” Bitty traces his fingers over Jack’s chest. 

 

Jack presses his own to Bitty’s lips, feels the weight of what he knows are perfectly straight white teeth. “You are now, anyway.”

 

Bitty smiles against Jack’s fingertips, then kisses them. “Thank you.”

 

“That's enough talking,” Jack says finally. “That's my talking quota for the day.”

 

Bitty laughs at him as he swipes his hand down his face, exhausted, as though wiping away the seriousness of the last few minutes. Bitty laughs more when Jack flips them, digs his fingers into Bitty’s side, tickles him until his arms are thrashing, then pins his hips to the bed like he'd planned, sending Bitty’s giggles into breathless moans.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> This was already posted to tumblr. Come visit me there! Adventuresinsuburbia.tumblr.com


End file.
